


Know By Heart

by explosionshark



Category: Life Is Strange (Video Game)
Genre: F/F
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-09-11
Updated: 2015-09-11
Packaged: 2018-04-20 04:31:37
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 863
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4773653
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/explosionshark/pseuds/explosionshark
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The sunset casts a warm amber glow on her skin, long shadows making everything a little more dangerous. Chloe’s smile is as familiar as ever, worn and comfortable, like an old sweater. “Hey.”</p>
<p>---</p>
<p>Max and Chloe sneak into their old elementary school. Max gets pensive, Chloe gets hugged.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Know By Heart

**Author's Note:**

> A thing I wrote for a prompt meme on tumblr. This one's for [nomtheburritos](http://nomtheburritos.tumblr.com/), master fanartist, lovely human being, all around great pal.
> 
> Title from the song by The American Analog Set.
> 
> And [Kaelin](http://archiveofourown.org/users/TippyTypewriter) beta'd for me again. What a gift. What a treasure.

Max is dismayed to find out the elementary school she went to with Chloe has been shut down.

“Budget cuts,” Chloe intones through a puff of smoke. “Besides, there’s no more kids in this neighborhood anymore. They all got shuffled to Union, or they’re in private schools. It’s all just hella rich old people now.

She spins on her heel and flicks the smoldering cigarette butt into the gutter.

“C’mon,” Chloe says, bending at the knees beside the fence and cupping her palms low. “I’ll give you a boost up.”

Max casts a furtive look around the street. Empty, apparently. No cops or jumped-up security guards waiting to bust them. “Okay.”

Despite Chloe’s help, Max’s journey over the fence isn’t entirely graceful. She lands on the other side poorly, ankle rolling slightly with the bad impact. It aches, a little, but she manages not to topple over, hides her grimace well enough when Chloe asks if she’s okay. Next over the fence is the skateboard Chloe hands to her, followed closely by Chloe herself who hoists herself up and over the fence so effortlessly that Max finds herself blushing. Whether it’s from embarrassment at her own sloppy performance or the way Chloe’s shirt rides up to reveal taut muscles, she’s not entirely sure.

They make their way across the open field at the back of the school. Max wants to linger at the run-down playground; it’s creepy and kind of sad and with all the emotions teeming up in her chest, the only thing Max can think to do is take pictures. If she can’t control the way it feels, she can at least control the way it looks. But Chloe rushes Max through, promising to bring her back another time. Her goal is the blacktop.

Watching Chloe skate around in the empty expanse of their old school stirs some of the sharpest nostalgia Max has experienced yet. It’s familiar in some ways, echoes of the past ringing through her head. It’s her oldest friend, in a place that holds some of her oldest memories, but nothing about this is the way it’s been preserved in her mind. The dissonance leaves her dizzy, kind of breathless.

Chloe seems to notice, because after a few minutes of zooming around the pavement, she skates back up to Max. The sunset casts a warm amber glow on her skin, long shadows making everything a little more dangerous. Chloe’s smile is as familiar as ever, worn and comfortable, like an old sweater. “Hey.”

“Hey.”

“You are thinking way too hard to be having a good time,” Chloe observes, pushing her beanie off her head so she can run a hand through her hair. She tosses the hat at Max and kicks off away from her, calling over her shoulder, “Look alive, hippie. I’m gonna pull some sick tricks, get some good shots of me.”

The lighting is terrible, and she knows the photos will probably turn out awful, but Max does as she’s bid, grateful for the distraction. She knows Chloe asked for Max’s sake, not her own vanity.

Max is as clueless as ever when it comes to skateboarding (at least that much hasn’t changed) but the tricks that Chloe pulls seem ‘sick’ enough to her; mostly flip tricks, a few shaky grinds along an old rusty lunch table, and a few… wheelies? But on the front wheels? When Max calls out for her to do a “tre flip” she manages to not eat pavement, which was better than Trevor had done.

Though she started out mugging for the camera, cheeky and boisterous and brave, it doesn’t take long before Chloe lapses into a sort of calm Max rarely gets to see. She just… _flows_ , like the skateboard is part of her body. The look on her face is too focused to be truly serene, but it’s beautiful and it makes the bones of Max’s ribcage curl in until her breath is short and her heart aches with the pressure.

Max isn’t sure how much time she spends just watching Chloe, but the horizon has faded to a slim strip of orange in the distance when Max impulsively rises from the pavement and tromps over to Chloe.

Chloe hears her coming and slides to a stop a few feet away, brow arched inquisitively. “What’s up?”

Max reaches out grabbing Chloe’s hand and tugging her off the board. Chloe laughs and plays it up, rocking into Max with enough force to almost bowl them over, and wrapping her arms around Max’s shoulders. Max presses her forehead into the crook of Chloe’s neck, feeling the warmth of Chloe’s breath against the shell of her ear when Chloe tucks her head into the hug.

“What’s gotten into you?” Chloe asks, voice low and raspy and so, so close.

Max wishes she could take the wound up ball of emotion out of her chest and press it into Chloe’s hands. There’s no other way she could begin to explain what she feels or why.

“I just missed you,” Max says simply, instead, and it must be enough because Chloe just tightens her grip and whispers, “Me too,” into Max’s hair.

**Author's Note:**

> I have a [tumblr](http://explosionshark.tumblr.com/). Sometimes it's even good.


End file.
